People don’t tell you about days like this.
It’s Sunday, the last day of the Kuskokwim 300 – a three hundred mile sled dog race that marks the beginning of race season here in western Alaska – and I’ve been at the station for more than 12 hours straight.
Which is happening more and more frequently these days. In fact, as 7 o’clock rolls around, it occurs to me that tomorrow will be my third Monday in a row unpunctuated by a weekend. Not that I’m keeping score, exactly – nor am I holding down the fort alone.
This weekend has been a blur of volunteers and staff coming and going at all hours of the day and night – checking weather conditions, calling race officials, and obsessively refreshing the GPS tracker that pinpoints all of our favorite mushers along the trail.
(Naturally, we’re all routing for K300 rookie and former KNOM-er Tara Cicatello – who, at this exact moment, looks to be on track for a spectacular Red Lantern finish!)
People don’t really tell you about the hard stuff. About how tired you’ll feel. How genuinely impossible it will feel to drag your bum out of bed and shuffle to the station in 10 degree weather, when you only just left. They don’t tell you about how the days and nights will blur together, leaving you with the constant sensation of being both perpetually asleep and awake.
You know what else they don’t tell you? That you’ll get through it. And you will. Not because it’s easy, but because you’re tougher than you realize.
Caitlin wrote a post recently about the difficulties of staying in one place, and of forcing yourself through the uncomfortable. (Something I also struggle with.) And as the sluggish dusk of January drags on, I’m definitely discovering what constitutes “uncomfortable” for me personally.
But I’m also seeing others confront and conquer their own discomfort. For example, watching Tara’s GPS signal (from the comfort of my own bed, I might add) definitely helps to put things in perspective. Before she left for Bethel – and her first-ever sled dog race – I asked Tara how she kept going when she was utterly miserable on the trail.
“What’s the alternative?” she asked. “To just give up?”
The fact that surrender wasn’t even an option probably illustrates more about Tara’s constitution than mine. Nevertheless, it’s inspiring to watch that tiny dot with her initials move closer and closer to the finish line – because I know she’s not having a easy race.
But I also know that she’s going to make it. And every time I press refresh on my computer screen, I’m reminded of this quote:
“There is more in us than we know. If we could be made to see it perhaps, for the rest of our lives, we will be unwilling to settle for less.” – Kurt Hahn
After more than three days on the trail, Tara Cicatello finished the Kuskokwim 300 (her very first sled dog race) at 1:39 a.m. Monday morning!
